Sunday, March 2, 2008

Anonymous or Not

Welcome Friends,

I started this post with the title "This Cave is Mine" as a familiar form of announcing a new blog's birth.

But now I'm scratching my head, thinking what this small corner of the world should be dedicated to, what would it's purpose be, and whether or not it would bore you (the guest) by being purely selfish and narrating events that happen to me and thoughts that storm through my head and leave them strewn all over the floor? or..

Should it be about something that you could find interesting. After all you ARE the guest, and I already know what's in my own head.

Now I'll put down this challenge that most things that we find to be interesting have some truth in them. You would argue "but fiction is widely popular!" but I assure you it is not because of how fictional it is, but because how we try ever so hard to find the link between these fictional events and the real events around us.

Each novel is a puzzle for our minds to rationalize and in the end one of the main characteristics we use for its evaluation is? How realistic it was!

So the catch is, the more interesting I try to make this, by being more true and realistic to myself, the less anonymous I'll become.

This dillema I'm sure faces any blogger wishing to stay unknown. The more you share, the more the possibility of someone close to you can complete the puzzle and jump to the conclusion that its you!

You can keep your musings average, unoriginal and uninspired, in order to "blend in" the general public, but then, that would defeat the whole purpose of blogging as a means of Self-expression?

More to that problem, the sheer challenge of trying to STAY anonymous is pretty daunting! who needs the headache of falsifying a whole new identity. Trying to sound and act differently. It can be exciting at first and the warmth of anonymity's cloak gives you the Freedom to do so many things that you normally wouldn't do if you knew others would recognize you. But later on, you begin to feel increasingly ISOLATED by the same cloak that shields you from the rest of the world.

Lets examine the 3 different paths the figure above offers:a) No identifiable information:This begs to ask what information is to be considered identifiable, and who's trying to identify you. If the person you need to hide from knows you well enough, your blog would end up being a blank page! that's depressing. Not very good.

b & c) False Identity & Stolen Identity:Here you have to tell lies to sound like you're someone else. Which also works against your need for self-expression. instead of expressing your own thoughts you're getting busy weaving lies. Very counter-productive.

So, are we saying that Anonymity only enables your Self-expression in the Short-term? and that on the long run it actually works against it??!